Are Online Courses Dying? Here's How To Build One That Actually SELLS In 2026.
In this episode Omar Zenhom examines the current state of the online‑course market, which is projected to reach $400 billion in 2026 and over $1 trillion by 2032. He argues that while the market is booming, the traditional model of selling static information‑heavy courses is dying. Three converging forces—free AI‑generated information, pandemic‑driven quality collapse, and dismal completion rates (under 15%)—have eroded consumer trust. Zenhom’s core insight is that creators must shift from selling information to selling transformation: a clear, promised outcome. He outlines three high‑potential models for 2026: (1) Implementation Systems that start with a desired result and work backwards, providing tools, templates, and accountability; (2) Course + Coaching hybrids that add a weekly group coaching call to bridge the gap between generic knowledge and personal application; (3) Cohort Launches that create a shared start/end date, community accountability, and dramatically higher completion rates (85‑90%). He also positions AI as a powerful ally for creators (e.g., content generation, idea validation) but stresses that AI cannot replace human coaching, community building, or the creator’s lived experience. Finally, he gives three concrete actions for creators this week: audit the sales page to focus on outcomes, add a live touchpoint (Q&A, call, WhatsApp), and run a pilot cohort with a capped enrollment. The episode concludes that the “lazy” course model is dead, but a new, accountability‑rich, outcome‑focused approach offers greater loyalty, referrals, and revenue.
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If you ever thought about building an online course or you already have one, you probably asked yourself some version of this question: Is it still worth it? Because from the outside, the signals make no sense. The online course market is heading towards $400 billion globally. More people are buying online education than any other point in human history. All the course creators I speak to, and I know them personally, I spoke to about a dozen of them recently, They all say the same thing. They've been in the game for 5, 6, 7 years, and they all are reporting the worst numbers since they've started their business. So which is it? Is there an opportunity? Is there money to be made or is it all dried up? Is online education over? Here's the answer. The opportunity is actually bigger than ever, but the model that most people are using to chase that opportunity is absolutely dead. They're going after it the wrong way. And today I'm going to show you what to do instead, how to do it the right way, because the market has shifted. And if you don't shift with it, you're asking for trouble. Before I give you any context, I want to give you the most important insight of this episode, because if you get this one thing, everything else makes sense. Most people are selling online courses, are selling information. You need to stop doing that. You need to start selling transformation. And there's a difference. And let me tell you what it looks like. Information looks like this. I got 12 modules. I got 46 lessons on this topic. Everything you need to know about this topic, I'm going to teach you. Sounds reasonable, right? Problem is that nobody's buying that anymore. Transformation, on the other hand, sounds like this. Here's a specific result you will have at the end of this program. And here's the exact plan we're going to go through. You're going to lose 10 pounds in the next 6 weeks. That's an example. People will buy. Scratch that. They're going to run frantically if there's an opportunity to get an outcome. People are tired of learning. And by the way, information is available plentiful. People are not buying information. Here is an example. I'm gonna give you two examples. Number one is this podcast. Okay? I've been running this podcast for 11, almost 12 years. Are you paying anything right now? No, it's free. I understand that information is supposed to be free. It should be free. People should be able to educate themselves and then implement the way they feel. Now, if they want more beyond information, if they want implementation, if they want things to get done for them, in other words, a service, that's a different price. It's a different thing. I don't offer that, but you could buy that somewhere. Here's a second example. I saw this guy selling an online course on a strategy to win bigger pots in poker. I play poker recreationally. I play in some tournaments. I have a lot of fun with it. I love it. And I And I'm always looking for new strategies. I'm not going to name this person or their course or their strategy to protect their identity. But, you know, it seemed like a pretty solid course and a lot of information was going to be provided. And I was about to buy the course because I was curious about the strategy. He was going to provide some information about a different way to approach certain positions, certain situations in poker. He's not going to promise me an outcome. He's not going to increase my win rate or increase my bankroll through, you know, winnings in poker. None of that. It was just going to provide me information. Now, I was about to buy the course, but before I did, I went to my buddy Claude, you know, I went to AI and I asked Claude, hey, this strategy is called so-and-so and I'm thinking about buying this course. Here's the URL. Should I buy this course? Is there something that you could teach me from this course or something that you can show me this strategy or explain the strategy to me? Or is buying the course required? And Claude just told me, hey, you don't need to buy the course. The strategy is actually these 5 pillars. Let me explain what they are. 1, 2, 3, 4. And he gave me a summary and then say, you want me to go into depth? I can teach you each part of those modules, each 5 of those things step by step so that when you play poker the next time, you can try it out. It doesn't mean this course is a scam. This person is a scammer. No, but it just means that I could get the information somewhere else. And that is just clear proof that Information is just not enough as your product when you're selling education. So what's actually happening here? Online courses are not dying, but the old model of online courses is dying. Okay? And there's a massive difference. You could get a piece of the pie of this $400 billion industry in 2026. It's gonna hit over trillion dollars in 2032. So this means it's not a dying industry. The trend is going upwards. It's just a maturing industry. Things are changing. Now creators who understand this, they're going to adapt and their best years are to come. But creators who are still running the old 2016, 2017 playbook of selling courses are going to go out of business. So what killed the old model? Well, 3 things and all 3 things happened at the same time. It's like the perfect storm. First, information became free. AI, like I mentioned, YouTube, Google, anything a standard online course teaches you from a pure information standpoint can be found in a few seconds. You are not competing with other course creators anymore. You are competing with ChatGPT, with Claude, with Gemini, and those models, the paid versions, not even the free versions, but the paid versions don't cost $9.97. They cost $20 a month. By the way, this is the biggest bargain in town. If you're not paying for Claude, for example, for $20 a month, you're nuts. This is an incredible opportunity to utilize and leverage this technology in ways you can't imagine. So selling knowledge alone in 2026 is like selling bottled water next to a waterfall, right? From a spring, right? The water is fine. The water that you're selling is fine. The pricing is the problem. Why would I buy your bottled water when there's fresh spring water right next to you? The second thing that happened is the market got burned, okay? The pandemic created a land rush when it came to online courses. Everyone launched a course, which meant quality collapsed. And buyers paid good money and never finished those courses and never implemented and got burnt out. So what happened is, is that consumers really started to become skeptical of online courses. There's no more excitement anymore. There's no more curiosity. And now trust is becoming a very rare commodity in online education. A lot of people don't trust these online courses anymore when before they're kind of like, hey, this is cool. I'll learn this. I'll pay this much money. And the third thing is it became common that Completion rates of these courses have become embarrassing. Okay, the industry never wanted to talk about this, but the average online course completion rate is under 15%. And that's for paid courses. It gets worse when it's free. Okay. Which means for every 100 people who bought an online course, fewer than 15 finish it. That's just pathetic. The old model doesn't work. Now, why is this a problem? Course completion? Because if they don't complete the course, it's gonna be very hard for them to implement what they learn, and therefore they're not going to get the results that you want them to have so that you can get some testimonials to prove that what you're selling actually works. You want completion rates sky high so that you can get incredible testimonials and just proof of concept, prove it to yourself that what you're actually teaching and what you're providing is helping other people in getting results. So what actually works? What should you do as we move forward? Well, there's 3 models I want to share with you that you could choose from that have huge upside. Model number 1 is what I call the implementation system. Stop calling it a course. Stop thinking of it as a course. A course delivers content. As soon as you call it a course, you're thinking that I'm just giving content. An implementation system delivers a result. The difference is how you build this, how you put this together. An implementation system starts with an outcome and works backwards. That means whatever you're going to be offering has an outcome, meaning that what are they going to be able to do by the end? What are they going to get at the end? Then I have to work backwards. How am I going to get them there? So what is the specific result that the student needs in this program? And then what are the exact steps between where they are now and the result? What I build that bridge to get them to that, to that destination. What are the tools? What are the templates? What are the resources that I need to give them to remove all the obstacles that are in their way to make this so easy for them to get that result? What does accountability look like from inside the program? How do I make sure that if they're having an off day, a lazy day, that they do what they need to do to get to the result. The content, the videos, the lessons is not the product. Okay? It's just one of the tools you're going to use to get them the result. What you're selling is the transformation. They are something right now. They want to become something else. They are somewhere and they want to go somewhere else. So, for example, we have a program called the $100 MBA. I'm sure you're aware of it. And we have 3 tracks: Start, Grow, Scale. And each track has a result. Has an outcome. Start is exactly what it sounds like. It gets people to their first sale, their first dollar. If they made $0, we're going to make sure you're not at zero anymore. You're going to be at least at $1. The Growth Track gets them to $300,000 in annual revenue and the Scale Track gets them to $1 million in annual revenue. That's the outcome. Yes, we have super high quality video lessons, but we have those lessons because it helps them with the outcome, not because that's what they bought. I'm not selling lessons. I know that the lessons alone don't work. They need implementation. That's why we have like an interactive workbook where they actually do the work to build their business alongside with the lessons. And we actually tell them, don't move on until you actually do the homework. Like, for example, build your website for your business is one of the homeworks in one of the modules before you move on, because you won't be able to do much if you don't have a website. Yes, we give the recommendations and the tools and all that kind of stuff. But the point here is, is that You need step-by-step milestones. We give them templates like a one-page business plan, like a P&L sheets, like finance templates. We give them AI tools so that they could write better emails, they could validate their ideas, they could create better offers and price their products. Why? Why do we give these things? Again, I'm trying to remove all the roadblocks, all the excuses, all the things that are going to stop them from getting to the result. Model number 2, course plus coaching. This is a hybrid model. If you have a course right now and it's underperforming, this is the fastest way to save it. Almost nobody is doing it. They're just basically saying, this is a course and I'm just going to market the hell out of it and try to make sure that people buy it. Hopefully it works. And a lot of times this is the single fastest way to save an underperforming course. And almost nobody's doing it. Okay. They just think that this is a course and I'm just going to hope that everybody buys it. If you just add one weekly group coaching call for one hour with your group, that's going to add tremendous value. That one addition will fundamentally change what you are selling. Here's why it works so well. Your course solves the what and the how, shows them what they don't know, the information, shows them how to do it. Now, the coaching call solves the why it's not working for them specifically because If we're going to be honest, no matter what you are helping people with, every situation is different. And in order for you to get people unstuck, you're going to have to understand their specific situation. That gap between generic information and personal application is exactly where most people fall off, where students fall off. You want to make sure that they have no excuses and they get out of their own way. They watch the lessons, they understand the concepts, and they hit a specific situation where they're like, "Oh, I'm stuck. I don't know how to move forward." Let's say you're in the fitness industry and you're getting people fit and they have a specific, you know, regimen or diet and a workout. But the holidays are coming up. "What am I not going to have, you know, food and dessert with my family? There's not a lot of time to go to the gym when it's all hectic and the kids are home from school." They're stuck. You're going to give them a plan. Specific to that. In a course with coaching, stuck means bring it to the call on Tuesday and we're going to solve it. We're going to get you unstuck. This is also an incredible retention tool. It gets people to want to come back week after week and continue to renew their membership with you. It's also a lot easier to get testimonials when you're coaching live and doing breakthroughs live, and you can grab their testimonials right after or even on the call. You can also charge more for this type of program, not because You're adding more content. It's not about the content, but you're adding accountability. You're adding a chance for people to say, there is no way I can fail. There's no more excuses. You get real-time feedback. You get unstuck when you need to. You get to ask questions. You know for sure that it's going to work for you because you're going to get tailored coaching. You don't need to rebuild your whole program. All you have to do is add a weekly group coaching call. That's all you got to do. And it's going to add an incredible amount of value. Model number 3, the cohort launch. This one is actually very interesting because people don't understand how powerful it is. This model really addresses the accountability problem at the structural level. When you have a cohort launch, that means you have a group of people starting all at the same time. You're going to have a cohort that starts, let's say, the second week in January. Everybody's starting and they're going to do a 6-week program. And when that cohort is finished, there'll be a next program, or you can have another cohort start the week after. But the point is that everybody's starting and ending at the same time. There's live sessions, there's a shared start date, there's a shared end date. So students are going through the program together. Now there's a real accountability piece, not just between you and the students, but with each other, students with students. The magic of cohorts is that the community that's being built is not a feature. It is the product. It's the reason why people love these programs. And the numbers don't lie. Cohort completion rates run from 85 to 90%. That's incredible. Compare that to the 15% of online courses. Oof, that's way better. And the funny thing is that there's no really difference in the quality of the information. I've been part of a lot of cohort programs, coaching programs that were in a cohort fashion. And there's something about learning alongside 30 other people who are having the same experience as you, and you're all having the same shifts in psychology, and you're all kind of getting better together. Another interesting thing is that you don't want to be the one that gets left behind. You don't want to miss a live session. You want to make sure you show up every single time. There's a real social pressure there, and it's a really healthy social pressure. There's also this urgency that self-paced evergreen programs just don't really create. You know, this idea of like, You know, consume it whenever you want, wherever you want. That doesn't really work. People need a start date. I'm starting my transformation today. I will get to my outcome on this day. It's exciting. And because this whole group is kind of pushing each other, it creates this positive energy where everybody pushes each other to get results, which generates incredible social proof. And again, lots of testimonials. Is this episode giving you some clarity? Is it getting you pumped? Is it getting you excited? If so, I'm happy. But I do think you should subscribe to the show because I have an upcoming episode that I'm working on that you're going to absolutely love. It's something that I really enjoyed creating and it's all about are successful people just getting lucky? How much does luck influence success in the first place? I dive deeply into this and really address this topic head on. So if you want to hear about it, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it. I also think it's time for me to address the elephant in the room. I kind of touched on it earlier, but every course creator I talk to right now have some version of the same fear. AI is going to replace me. Why would anyone pay me or pay for my course when ChatGPT or Claude can answer their questions for free? And here's my take. They're right. If you are insisting on selling information, you are no match for AI. Okay? AI is going to beat you every day of the week. And Twice on Sunday. But here what AI can't do, at least not for now, okay? It can't sit on a group coaching call and build a relationship with your students, diagnose a specific person's specific business problem that's not working and solve it. It can't build a community of people that are going through the same thing at the same time, creating an accountability, uh, system and a connection that changes whether somebody quits or not. You know, if somebody leaves the group, they're just not going to just go unnoticed. There's some feeling of like, hey, I should just not abandon these people. I should continue to go on. My story, my personal experience building two businesses, running them simultaneously for 10 years, selling one, then growing the other. That is my moat. That is my lived experience is what I can offer people through this podcast and everything else we do that ChatGPT just can't because it doesn't have the same judgment. It doesn't have the same wisdom. It doesn't have the same nuance. It doesn't have the understanding and the context of what I been through. All right, so 3 moves that you can take on this week to take action. Enough strategy. Here's what you actually do. Move 1, audit your sales page, right, of your, of your course right now. Read every sentence. Count how many times you describe what the course, the modules, the lessons, the content is. Now count how many times you describe the student's life and what it looks like after they take the course. Course? What's the outcome? If the ratio is not heavily towards the after picture, rewrite that sales page. Make sure it's all about the outcome and about the experience they're going to go through, the transformation they're going to go through. Nobody buys modules, right? If I can just download the information in your brain and you don't have to watch any videos, wouldn't that be better, right? That would be best, just like The Matrix. So it's not really about how many videos, it's It's about what you could do for me. What is the outcome after this is all said and done? The second thing you could do is add one live touchpoint. If your course has no live element, this is gonna be a priority. It doesn't need to be weekly. It could be a monthly Q&A call. It doesn't even have to be a structured lesson. It could be just open Q&A. Heck, it doesn't even need to be a live video call. You could make it a WhatsApp call. And move 3, try one cohort. Do not rebuild anything. Just do a launch and build this one cohort and have a start date, have an end date, and tell people, hey, we're going to take in a live cohort of, let's say, 30 people. And once we hit 30 people, that's it. Then we're going to close the doors. Cap enrollment, open it to your list and see what happens. See what kind of energy you get. And then when you go through the cohort, see what happens with completion rates, with testimonials, with the outcomes that you achieve for your students. So to wrap up, online courses are not dying, but the lazy version of online courses is dying. This version where you, you know, record the content once, set up the funnel, wait for the money to come in, that gravy train has made its last stop. It's over. But what it's replacing is actually better. More accountability, more community, more genuine transformation, more skin in the game from the creator, you, more results for the student, more loyalty, more retention, more referrals, more business. That sounds all good. The market is bigger than ever and it's growing. The only question is, is are you going to be building a product that was good for 10 years ago or today in the future? If this episode has helped you, I highly encourage you to check out a previous episode that we recently published called The Beginner's Blueprint for Building a Digital Product That Actually Sells. This is a whole A to Z of how to build a digital product in 2026. We recently published it, so it's easy to find in whatever app you're using right now to consume the podcast. Thanks so much. For checking us out, and I'll see you in the next one.
